Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy's first masterpiece, The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a scene of such heartlessness and cruelty that it still shocks readers today. A poor workman named Michael Henchard, in a fit of drunken rage, sells his wife and baby daughter to a stranger at a country fair. Stricken with remorse, Henchard forswears alcohol and works hard to become a prosperous businessman and the respected mayor of Casterbridge. But he cannot erase his past....

Thomas Hardy's "The Woodlanders" was first published serially in 1887. The tale takes place in the woodland village of Little Hintock and is centers around the romantic dramas of its inhabitants. The story begins with Giles Winterborne, an honest woodsman, who wishes to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury. While the two have been informally betrothed to each other since they were young, Grace gains an education through her father's persistent...

From the book:
This slightly-built romance was the outcome of a wish to set the emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous background of the stellar universe, and to impart to readers the sentiment that of these contrasting magnitudes the smaller might be the greater to them as men. But, on the publication of the book people seemed to be less struck with these high aims of the author than with their own opinion, first,...

Elfride Swancourt is the daughter of the Rector of Endelstow, a remote sea-swept parish in Corwall based on St Juliot, where Hardy began A Pair of Blue Eyes during the beginning of his courtship of his first wife, Emma. Blue-eyed and high-spirited, Elfride has little experience of the world beyond, and becomes entangled with two men: the boyish architect, Stephen Smith, and the older literary man, Henry Knight. The former friends become rivals, and...

Jocelyn Pierston, a sculptor of growing fame, is determined to find his ideal in womanhood, a quest that has led to many fruitless encounters. For just as it seems he has found his heart's desire, disillusionment sets in and his burning love turns to ashes. Returning to Portland, his birthplace, he meets young, innocent Avice Caro. They are betrothed until a fateful meeting with the self-assured Marcia Bencomb changes the course of his life yet again....

Ironic short stories. "Stockdale, a lonely young fellow, who had for weeks felt a great craving for somebody on whom to throw away superfluous interest, and even tenderness, was not sorry to join her." A collection of six novellas, written in the 1880s and 1890s, about the true nature of nineteenth century marriage and its inherent restrictions.

In the sphere of poets like Swift, Meredith and Kipling, Thomas Hardy is today becoming recognized as one of the greatest English poets of this century. As a young man with interests in journalism, art, and architecture, Hardy achieved greatness in the fiction genre early on, writing novels for a living until his mid-fifties. He then abandoned fiction entirely in order to devote himself to his true passion-poetry. This ample selection of poems demonstrates...

The second collection of poetry from the author of such classics as Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd. Although well known for his novels, like Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy also wrote poetry throughout his life. Poems of the Past and the Present is Hardy's second volume of poetry, originally published in 1901. This wide-ranging collection is divided into five sections: War Poems, Poems of Pilgrimage, Miscellaneous Poems,...

Paula Power inherits a medieval castle from her industrialist father who has purchased it from the aristocratic De Stancy family. She employs two architects, one local and one, George Somerset, newly qualified from London. Somerset represents modernity in the novel. The changing of the old order in country manors and mansions may be slow or sudden, may have many issues romantic or otherwise, its romantic issues being not necessarily restricted to...

The Hand of Ethelberta explores the class distinctions of Victorian England through the trials of Ethelberta Petherwin. By the age of 18, the humble governess and daughter of a butler marries well, only to become a widow two weeks later. In order to support her mother and ten siblings, clever Ethelberta quickly learns to navigate the complex social world as a poetess and storyteller, attracting four persistent suitors along the way. She must decide...